We flew home from Guatemala and Compassion International late Sunday afternoon.
On Monday this arrived for me in the mail.
And then today, another one.
The first dated July 17th and the other August 18th. One for the email I sent him and one for the birthday card, stickers and drawings from my kids.
I mention this because I know so many of you, like me, have doubted the impact of letters. Whether they are ever received or what benefit a five-year-old could possibly get from a letter written in a language he doesn’t understand from a woman he’s never met. How long does it take and is the news I send today even relevant by the time he reads it?
And then I watched the Compassion staff in Guatemala unpack a box of letter after letter after letter after letter.
I saw where they sort the correspondence – cubbies for countries from all over the world.
Sponsors from all over the world.
I had to touch them with my own incredulous fingers – all those words of encouragement, years of faithfully constructed friendships – and for the first time I felt the full weight of a letter that can’t be measured by a postage stamp.
Delivered lovingly, carefully, regularly to places without a zip code.
So when Thomas’ two letters arrived this week from a remote coastal region of Ghana I held them in my hands and knew I was touching the long chain of people who had made possible the delivery of his precious words to my doorstep on a muggy afternoon in Virginia.
I read his letter, his love for cars and rice and stew and my eyes blurred with thoughts of Maynar, Josue, and Daniel whose sponsors had started investing words in them from this same young age as my Thomas all the way through to their university years. It terrifies me to wonder if I will be able to run that whole long race as faithfully as their sponsors did.
But then I read what he wrote.
I read what a five-year-old living in an HIV infected area in Ghana asked his volunteer teacher to write to me and I felt the iron enter my soul; I will not fail you Thomas.
Message for my Sponsor: is that he loves you soo much and may God bless you for what you’ve been doing for him.
But it was his prayer request that gutted me. Because I have the unique vantage point of two letters that arrived side-by-side even though they were written a month apart. And in both, a five-year-old’s prayer request to his thirty-six year old, highly educated, American sponsor is the stuff of Kings and legend. And it puts me to shame:
Prayer request from child: Is that God should also protect his family and himself and also give him wisdom.
Prayer request from child: For wisdom, good health, and God’s protection
I will follow this child and his example back to the Christ that connects us. And I will jealously make his prayer request my own and beg the God that entrusted this sacred friendship to me, to help me live up to it.
And I trust that He will, because Thomas has prayed it,
Prayer for my Sponsor: That God should protect and guide you in whatever you do, and bless it.
Amen and amen.
the spiritual maturity of the compassion kids continually amazes me… it is humbling.
I’m sharing my compassion story tomorrow at the end of Giveaway week and there is a really cool giveaway related to Compassion too… I soooo believe in this organization… like from the bottom of my toes.
Thank you for how you are sharing this week… for being vulnerable so that others can see the amazing experience of sponsoring a child.
Thank you.
Wow. I could feel my eyes burning reading this post. The maturity of this child. 5 years old. I can only imagine what their precious eyes have seen and heard. Thank you for sharing this with us.
A couple weeks ago, we received a letter in the mail from our Compassion daughter, Vitoria in Brazil. I couldn’t hold back the emotion when I read how Vitoria’s parents — a bricklayer and a mama named Karine — pray for us every day. EVERY DAY!
And Karine had come onto the mission to ask the teacher if she would write to us, to ask us to pray for the other children who still suffer — for the ones who need sponsors and prayer partners.
And then your posts came after that, and Ann’s, too … and I’m moved once again by your words here tonight.
Thank you. (((Thank you.)))
I got a letter from our Compassion child this week too. (And our World Vision child today.) I wonder how God coordinated all these letters getting to us THIS WEEK?!?
It truly is a gift to bind our hearts with these children and these families. We all have so much we need to be rescued from.
Tonight as I tucked my boys in, I prayed for our child Joey Nicholas in the Philippines. My littlest interrupted, “Who’s Joey?” Ouch. But that is the question I want to answer for myself and my family and for Joey. Thank you for your humility and encouragement.
Wow. God’s timing is amazing, isn’t it? And it’s amazing to see the Scriptures proven true in our presence, that the little children have a better grasp at times than we do of our God and His love. Thank you for sharing your story this past week!
Thanks to you, I have signed up to be a correspondent with one or more Compassion children whose sponsors don’t write to them. I’m so eager to find a child I can write to! Thank you for the information about how I can do that.
Lisa-Jo, I received two letters from my sponsor child today, too! I wasn’t expecting them and I was so very excited! They are only the 2nd and 3rd letters I’ve gotten, since we sponsored him just this May.
I just wanted to share that when I first sponsored him, I felt like a had a new member of my family. I wanted to tell everyone, “Look! Our family has grown!” But then, I thought to myself, “no, he belongs to his parents- not to me.” And so, I stuffed those feelings down. After learning what I did through you & Ann, I realized tonight that God put that feeling in me. He bound our hearts together, like family. I’m so grateful for that now, and I hope I continue to feel that way years and years from now.
thank you :)
So cool, friend! Also, I love that I can hear your voice when I read your blog now. :)
How wonderful to recieve such news. How sweet is your sponsored childs heart xxx
It is so humbling to me to recieve thier letters. And like I wrote when yall were in guatemalea- “And just as I have committed to my birth daughters, I am committed to these girls halfway across the world- until they are old enough to be on their own- I will be there.” I don’t know what I would cut out of the budget first, but sponsorship would be the last on the list….
Wow. Amen and amen indeed. Kelly
I got a letter from my child in the Dominican Republic yesterday, too! :) I shared a little of his story on Amanda’s blog the other day, but thought you might like to hear an excerpt from his letter. Hopefully it will encourage you and anyone else who may read this to keep those letters flowing! :)
To give you a little background, when my sponsorship ended for one child, I asked Compassion for a “hard to sponsor” child. I had been sponsoring only the kids who fell into that category for awhile and expected an older or mentally challenged child. Instead I got this darling little 5 year old boy who looked like he had his shoes on the wrong feet. In his information, they mentioned that he was crippled.
I thought he was darling but would be easy to sponsor, so I called Compassion to see if there was a mistake. They confirmed that because he is crippled, he was considered hard to sponsor. Wow. I was more than happy to keep him! :)
Fast forward 14 years and he is now a FORMERLY crippled young man in the last year of his sponsorship. Compassion paid for the corrective surgery he needed. He accepted Christ about 4 or 5 years ago and wrote this to me in his most recent letter:
“I want you to know that I’m a man full of health, thanks to our Lord Jesus … I do not feel full of health because I’m strong. I’m full of health because you and I have put the eyes in that which defeated and gave us His healthiness, by His wounds we are healed. He gave us healthiness to our physical lives and our souls.”
Because his sponsorship will conclude within a year, our letters have taken a different turn, and our words are weightier than they were before. He ended his letter with, “I want you to know that you will always be a gift for me, and I will remember you. Really, your prayers towards me and my family do effect because I’m seeing the hand of God working. Thank you for being my gift, thank you for sponsoring me. God bless you!!”
Sponsorship is such an easy way to have a huge impact. I’m so thankful for the willing bloggers who see it all firsthand and encourage us to make a difference. I know it has forever changed your lives and has brought an avalanche of emotions and questions that you will need time to sort through. Thank you for taking the plunge and allowing your world to be upended. Hopefully, many will respond and sponsor kids and upend their world in a positive way.
Wow. Thanks so much for this post. We have 2 boys – one in India, one in Honduras, and knowing that they rarely get letters shames me. You (ok, God through you) has put the dynamite under my butt to make it happen. Easy fix…calendar pad a letter on a recurring schedule. I know, doesn’t sound all warm & fuzzy, but it’ll be the reminder that I need!
Today, I wrote my first letter to my first compassion child. Her name is Dayana and as I wrote her name out in my colored sharpies, I could barely control my excitement. I LOVE getting mail. There is nothing sweeter than getting a letter in the mail that isn’t a bill or something useless. Mail means someone took the time to write, or type, to find an envelope, to lick a stamp. It seems so small but I know the thrill of the letter.
Thanks for sharing with us the process our letters go through. It makes me even more excited for Dayana to receive my letter! :)
Nina
Thank you so much for the story of the travels of letters to and from sponsored kids. It makes it more real.